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However you won't notice the difference between a 30Hz display and a 60Hz display unless playing video games.

Try moving your mouse around. Try dragging a window around. Then try it on a 120Hz monitor. You will notice the significantly greater fluidity of motion added by each step up in refresh rate, even with bottom-of-the-line USB mice, which report at 125Hz.

Movies are 24hz and tv shows are 30hz (25hz in the UK).

Sports, news, and daytime dramas (yarg) are typically 50Hz or 60Hz, so they will be less fluid on a 30Hz display. Also, watching a 24Hz movie on a 30Hz monitor will make for a terribly juddery experience. The video will appear to "chunk" every 4 input frames/5 output frames, or 6 times per second.

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All that said, for static design work, coding, writing, etc., 4K at 30Hz would still be very useful if you can put up with the less natural feel to basic system movements.

I doubt the 30Hz would be the only qualitative difference between a $3500 display and a $1000 one.

That they blew such a fundamental spec of the display tells me that it should be much worse in other aspects (color rendition, etc).

Indeed; I've seen a TV that couldn't even handle 1080p at 60Hz. Its video processor wasn't fast enough to handle some kinds of video, so the image would stutter and freeze during high motion scenes. It also had a terrible panel driving algorithm that was incredibly blurry unless its crappy 120Hz feature was enabled.

These TVs are 24p capable as well, so you don't have to worry about jerky motion as long as you sync at the right refresh rate.

An unboxing review of that TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXBu9nxLN78

The video review does not have favourable things to say about it (flickering issues, lighting issues, etc.). I wonder though if the 39' Seiki 4K TV (going for $699) contains any sort of upgrade improving on the issues found in the 50' Seiki TV: http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra/d...

> You will notice the significantly greater fluidity

Its the law of diminishing returns. When I had 30Hz and 60Hz monitor on the same desktop (as in I could drag windows from one monitor to the other) it was barely noticeable and not at all distracting.

> Sports, news, and daytime dramas (yarg) are typically 50Hz or 60Hz

That's interlaced. So 60 fields per second but only 30 frames per second. You can make an argument that proper de-interlacing requires a 60hz display but in practice its only the kind of thing that videophiles will notice.

> watching a 24Hz movie on a 30Hz monitor will make for a terribly juddery experience.

The seiki also accepts 24hz at 4K, and will even go as high as 120Hz if you feed it the right 1080p signal (the upscaling will look like crap though). You just need to fiddle the PC's display settings as needed.

Its the law of diminishing returns. When I had 30Hz and 60Hz monitor on the same desktop (as in I could drag windows from one monitor to the other) it was barely noticeable and not at all distracting.

Maybe different people are more or less sensitive, but after seeing a friend's 120Hz monitor, once I can afford to upgrade my primary display to a nice 120Hz screen I'll never go back. I have a very low tolerance for latency and jitter.

That's interlaced. So 60 fields per second but only 30 frames per second. You can make an argument that proper de-interlacing requires a 60hz display but in practice its only the kind of thing that videophiles will notice.

Not necessarily; AFAIK some stations might still broadcast in 720p60. I think most people will notice that the athletes seem to be "moving slower" if 60i is deinterlaced to 30p, they just won't have the vocabulary to describe it.

The 39'' version of the 4K monitor you mention seems to be at Amazon right now for $700. I'd be interested to know if this works as an external monitor (in clamshell mode) for a MBP running OSX. I understand that it won't work as an additional display.

This size seems a bit overwhelming for use as a monitor. (I used to have a 30" display but got rid of it because it was too imposing on my desk.). It's still nice to see this as an option. It should be good for visualization of large data sets.

The problem seems to be latency. TV aren't meant to be interactive as much as PC monitors are. Especially at a high resolution like this, you will notice a lag between the time you perform an action and the time the TV renders it.

Reports are that lag time on the seiki is pretty small because it has the most bare-bones of image processing. Crummy video processing (especially the primitive upscaling from 1080p to 4K) is a problem for a TV but actually a benefit for a monitor.

Thanks for the note. I suppose this is why some reports about use of 4K monitors talk about laggy rendering of the mouse?

I have the Seiki 50" and can confirm it is awesome for videogames. Using an Nvidia GTX 780 to drive the 4k resolution with "ultra" settings, and while the frame rate is 24-30 fps, you don't want to go back to 1080p.

Incidentally, sitting about 18 inches away from the monitor and you feel like you're in the game.

>However you won't notice the difference between a 30Hz display and a 60Hz display unless playing video games.

This is absolute rubbish. I have an HTPC, and I played with the refresh rate settings on the TV. You can definitely notice the difference between 30Hz and 60Hz. Heck, I could even notice the difference between 50Hz and 60Hz (mouse movement was faster/more fluid).

> Ironic for me that just as these things start to show up, I start to become less able to use them.

Same with me! I just bought the expensive 15" MacBook Pro with retina display, but I ended up using a 17" 1280x1024 external monitor with it to lower the eye strain. I am even more comfortable using a 19" 1280x1024 Dell monitor at work!

The Retina MacBook is effectively 1440x900 though, how is that straining to look at?

1920x1200 is great on the rMBP. Personally I don't find it "straining".

I am myopic with a spherical power of around -4 on both eyes. I used to love high-dpi displays until recently. But now I can't seem to look at them for long. I am sorry, but I can't figure out the exact reasons. I have tried changing the resolution on the retina display and even turning off the over-sampling in the lower resolutions, but nothing feels comfortable. I also loved programming with font anti-aliasing/smoothing turned off, but this alas no longer works well on the retina display.